Noetica: Instructions to Authors

Aims and scope

The aim of Noetica is to promote the interests of the multi-disciplinary field of Cognitive Science (see What is cognitive science?). The participation of scholars from all areas of Cognitive Science is invited, including:

• Computer Science
• Linguistics
• Mathematics
• Neuroscience
• Philosophy
• Psychology

Noetica is intended to play the role of an initial testbed for new research. As such the emphasis is on fast turn around. Announcements and comments on the cogpsy mailing list are distributed immediately and are unmoderated. Articles for the open forum are selected by the editorial board rather than being subjected to a full review process. Articles for the journal, however, will be reviewed by at least three people.

The journal does not retain copyright, so authors are free to submit their work elsewhere having received the benefit of commentaries. Editors have the right to ask for revisions before publication.

Categories of Contribution for the Journal and Open Forum

• Original Article (max. 10000 words);
• Commentaries (500-1000 words);
• Author's Responses (5000-8000 words);
• Reviews (max. 10,000 words);
• Educational or Research Resources (e.g. databases, software, tutorial material); Having passed the editorial process an original article is declared open for comment by being linked into the web site. A notice of its appearance will also be distributed to subscribers. Commentaries, which are also subject to editorial review, will be added as they are received. If there has been substantial debate the author may be invited to write an author's response summarising their reactions to the commentaries after which the issue is closed.

  A review is a summary of a topic area primarily for researchers in that area or fairly closely associated areas.

  Educational and research resources include information and software that may be of use to the cognitive science community. This would include databases (e.g. The Sydney Morning Herald Word Database), software and tutorial material (e.g. Mathematical Memory Models Tutorial). This type of contribution also includes educational overviews which provide introductory material suitable for a researcher from a different field or for postgraduate students.

  The cogpsy mailing list

  The cogpsy mailing list is intended for discussion of issues and the dissemination of information important to researchers in all fields of cognitive science. Contributions could include:
  • announcements of new techreports, dissertations, theses, conferences, seminars or courses
  • discussions of research issues (including those arising from articles in Noetica)
  • requests for information about bibliographic issues
  • reviews of software or hardware packages

  Contributions can be sent to: cogpsy@neuro.psy.soton.ac.uk

  Communication

  All correspondence concerning the journal should be via email and should be addressed to noetica@psy.uq.edu.au.

  Submission

  Papers should be submitted using the Submission Form. Manuscripts can be transmitted either by providing the URL to the appropriate file, by email to noetica@psy.uq.edu.au, or by sending a disk in PC or Mac format to:

  Dr Simon Dennis
  Department of Psychology
  The University of Queensland
  Brisbane 4072
  Australia

  Journal Format

  Acknowledging the rapid developments in the area of text markup and multi-media extensions, submissions to the journal may be made in ASCII, LaTeX, Microsoft Word 6.0, Rich Text Format, Postscript or HTML. If you have any queries regarding manuscript formats and formating you can contact us at noetica@psy.uq.edu.au.

  The following guidelines will help to make your document easily viewable and will aid in converting from formats other than HTML.

  Images: All images should be provided in a compressed image format that is readable by standard World Wide Web browsers. GIF is preferred. Authors should make every effort to reduce images to be as small as possible, without becoming unreadable. Unless there are good reasons for providing large images, they should be scaled to fit as small, in-lined images within the text. Remember that images will be displayed in different sizes by different viewers and platforms. In particular, remember that people will want to print out your paper, so black on white is preferable.

  Tables: In general tables should be prepared either using the PRE or the TABLE tags in HTML. If submitting in a format other than HTML please format tables as text (do not use table facilities in other word processing packages).

  Equations: Equations should be marked up either in HTML 3.0 format or provided as a small in-lined images (GIF format preferred).

  Software

  Software submitted to the journal should be accompanied by:
  1. a description of the aims, methods and implementation;
  2. sufficient documentation to allow users to install and run the software;
  3. sample data, scripts, or any other material to provide a demonstration of the software in use.

  Language

  The language of the journal is English. However, authors are encouraged to include a copy of their abstract in any language of their choice.

  Structure

  Papers should conform to the normal structure for journal papers. They should be divided into sections, each clearly indicated by a heading. They should include:
  • Abstract (no more than 250 words)
  • Introduction
  • ... other sections as required...
  • Discussion or Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References

  Citation and Referencing

  Citations and references should conform to American Psychological Association standards. Use the following examples as a guide:

  Conference Proceedings

  Dennis, S. (1994) The null list strength effect in recognition memory: Environmental statistics and connectionist accounts. In A. Ram & K. Eiselt (Eds.), Program of the Sixteenth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 243-247). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

  Book Chapters

  Wiles, J., Halford, G. S., Stewart, J. E. M., Humphreys, M. S., Bain, J. D. & Wilson, W. H. (1994). Tensor models: A creative basis for memory retrieval and analogical mapping. In T. Dartnall (Ed.) Artificial Intelligence and Creativity: An Interdisciplinary Approach, (pp. 147-161).

  Books

  Halford, G. S. (1982). The Development of Thought. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

  Journal Articles

  Latimer, C.R., Joung, W., & Stevens, C.J. (1994). Modelling symmetry detection with back-propagation networks. Spatial Vision, 8(4), 415-431.

  Hypertext links

  Authors are encouraged to include hypertext links in their papers wherever feasible. These should be standard URLs and should be verified by the authors prior to submission.

  This document is an edited version of the Instructions for Authors of Complexity International.

  Simon Dennis
  26 October 1995